It doesn't hurt
by javajive
Summary: Post S5 finale - the reset failed - they are back at the beach. "He hates her. Can't stand the sight of her, and still he stays...." Sawyer, Kate, Suliet ment.


_One shot: Set after 'The incident'. Following "Sunflower dress" story. Jack's plan did not work out but time was reset and they are back where they began at the beach. Sawyer is dealing with his loss of Juliet, his rage against Kate and the complexity of his feelings for the two women. _

_Juliet is still alive and well, over at the 'Others__' and Sawyer doesn't have the guts to go and see her. Includes a bit of cowardice, a good old fashioned brawl and Kate's quickly deteriorating sense of fashion. I apologize if you find it a bit out of character for both Kate and Sawyer, but I just imagine them as extremely messed up after what's happened._

_Disclaimer: Not mine - none of it_

* * *

**It doesn't hurt**

_Crap._- He hasn't slept at all.

He rubs his eyes with rough hands. _This is not how it was supposed to be_. Sweaty, fitful and exhausting quasi-sleep with imagery like angry wasps circling his mind, around and around again. All of the whole fucking suffocating night long. It is bad enough to have that skinny-assed bitch around all day. He certainly does not need her at night as well. _Crazy-ass dreams._

He almost feels bad for her for yesterday. Almost but barely. He cannot concur up enough of compassion to feel sorry for her, but he had not set out to be nasty to her. He certainly hadn't planned it. He is no angel but he isn't a man that goes out of his way to be cruel. He finds no pleasure in brutality.

_Juliet. _

_She _would have disapproved. Both of the unnecessary cruelty and of his wayward, vagrant hands. Perhaps, especially of the hands.

He is still royally pissed. _That has not changed._He tells himself that nothing has actually changed. They are stuck on this beach. No one is willing to take the lead and decide what to do next. They are all in a common state of daze and waiting for something to happen. But for him, the main task of the day still remains, and has the same purpose as every other day before and after this since they returned to this god-forgotten beach. To avoid her at any cost. Just do anything to keep clear of her and her stupid face constantly showing up everywhere.

_Even in his idiotic dreams. _

That freckled little girl face with its too big front teeth and that badly feigned innocence. He is not the type of man to be violent with women. Ain't never seen the need for it. He likes to imagine that some shred of the decency and the southern gentleman manners instilled by his mother way back then still remains. But there is something about that face that makes him just want to punch her. Knock those frigging freckles and that goofy grin off her face.

The day did not start well but it peaked up when in an incredible stroke of luck, he found a full bottle of scotch. He had passed one of his former hiding spots used to squirrel away his stash, back then, an eternity ago. Anyhow, lo and behold there it was, dirty and muddy from having been buried in the humid forest floor. _But drinkable, you bet!_

_Juliet. _She wouldn't have approved.

The heat is relentless, the dry season has beleaguered the island for months now, and he needs to find a way to cool off. He almost smiles at the irony. Almost. He sets off down the beach, away from their little settlement. The bottle is swinging nonchalantly by its neck in his hand. He needs to be alone, to clear his thoughts. Yesterday it all made sense, the hatred, the cruelty, all of it, but somehow today he is disoriented. Pure and crystal-clear anger gave him purpose. _He found a strange comfort in it._ He had wanted to bring her down, degrade her, humiliate her but he has the uncomfortable feeling of having been beaten at his own game. _Thwarted._This morning in her tent, the soft-spoken accusation had hit home.

_Coward. - _He knows it to be true. How right she is.

He has not been back to see her. Kate has been of course, _the restless, fidgety bitch_. Never able to leave anything or anyone in peace, she had reported smugly with a pretend air of concern that his woman was alive and well and looking gorgeously blond as always. _So, yeah, maybe he is a spineless bastard_. He has yet to scrape up the courage to go and see for himself.

He thinks that if she wanted to see him, if he were really deserving, she would have come for his worthless ass. She ain't no wallflower and he has never known her to be shy about what she wants. The simple deduction from this is that it really is over. - _She has given up on him._- It didn't take much to make her trust in him come crumbling down. He still can't fathom it. The fragility of their life and the brittleness of the strings that held them together.

_And it hurts like hell._

He knows women. Always has. It is an aptitude that he has based his whole professional career on. To know what a woman is wants and to become that exact man. He has done it so long he doesn't even have to try anymore. It is a role that he slips into, unremarkably and unconsciously, without much of an effort.

He'd had no trouble deciphering Juliet.

He knew immediately from her reserved and guarded mannerism that this was a woman who had been betrayed. Only a serious injury would cause that type of brittle restraint. He saw clearly the insecurities she so desperately tried to hide under the calm beautiful surface of perfection. For all the cool, composed strength she so desperately wanted to project, he saw a woman in need of more reassurance than most. She wanted someone that it would be impossible doubt.

And for a while he became that man. - _For her._

He became someone sensible, indubitable and trustworthy, a rock that she could depend upon. He became the unassuming, levelheaded, steadfast one-woman man, James. And they were truly happy. _For a while. _He'd played the role for so long that he had almost, almost managed to convince himself that this was the bona-fide core of him, and that this was whom he truly was. Perhaps the longest con he had ever pulled, he nearly managed to trick himself. It did not mean that he did not have genuine feeling for her. _He did_. As best he managed, he did.

But it all fell apart the moment _they_returned.

He trudges on in the sand. A tricky and annoying surface to walk on unless he stays close enough to the shore to walk on the wet patch. He paces guardedly to avoid the larger waves as they wash up on the beach. He walks further than he has intended but finally he picks a spot. Not because it is particularly better than any other. He's just tired and crabby from tottering along in the damn sand and getting it in his shoes.

_Whatever insane god invented the tropics should be flogged into a pulp._

The sand looks deceivingly inviting and had he not already made intimate acquaintance with the pesky sand fleas that inhabits these beaches he would have stretched out on it. He finds a palm trunk to lean against in the shade and his mouth is stretched into a wry smile as he works to open the rusty cap of the bottle. The cap's sharp metal edge accidentally cuts the sensitive skin between his thumb and index finger but he pours a little of the bottle's content on it, grimacing while he takes a generous swig of it.

The liquid is balmy and erosive in his throat, his mind returns to _her_.

More than a partner. It is a part of himself that has been lost, the _Jim-part_ that he knows he will never again play. It is dead and buried, but it does not mean he does not miss it. _And ice._He really wishes he had some ice for his drink. Some ice clinking in a glass and his regal sublime blond beside him and life would have been worth living again. Only, he knows, she is not his any longer. She has made her choice and it hurts almost as bad as that moment when he thought her dead.

_When he'd lost his grip on her and she had given up on him._

The alcohol soothes the busy-buzz in his head and he catnaps. He lazily lifts the bottle to his lips, opening one eye towards the glorious panorama of the sea. The next swig catches in his throat. _What-the!…_He coughs and manages to get a significant amount up his nose.

_Goddammit! What the fuck is she doing here?!_

The damn woman has followed him all the way out here! The liquid burns his nose and the roof of his mouth. She really doesn't get it. Oh, for Jayzus sake! He shakes his head and starts to get up, get out of there. Fuming, literally.

Only, as he calms down a notch he realizes that she has not yet seen him. She is wading out in the water where the tide breaks and the waves slow down to a foamy fizzle. What the heck is she on? Off her rocks, a de-facto nut-job.

She is wearing something hideous out of brown puke-coloured tweed. Tweed. In the goddamn_ tropics. _He imagines she might have killed off Charlie's mum and raided her closet. It looks like it might be an old lady's skirt tucked up high and messily around her midriff resembling some kind of deranged tweed balloon around her ass.

On top of this she has deemed it stylish to don a man's shirt, light blue in colour and flapping like a fucking sail in the wind from the sea. A flaky flamingo on her pale stick legs, walking gingerly, stepping carefully with her back in a concentrated curve, holding a big bucket and something that resembles one of Yin's fishing nets.

Fisherman's friend alright.

He is livid to have had his drinking binge picnic interrupted so rudely by this unsightly view. _Fucking eyesore. _Enough to give you an embolism for god's sake! He sure walked far enough and still she hounds him. He tries to close his eyes, the late afternoon light reflected a thousand times in the seawater is agonizingly sharp and painful in his eyes but the eyes do not want to remain closed.

_She ain't even all that pretty._ More a nightmare than a dream.

Still there is something delicate, something that tugs at the heart about the girl storking about like a birdlike predator in the fizzle from the incoming waves. Something about the determined angle of her jaw and the way he can see her frown in concentration even from this distance. The sun is already low on the horizon and dusk settles quickly here in the tropics.

He knows he should leave. He should go. He came here precisely to avoid her. Now he cannot tear his eyes away from her. The Achille's heal of Sawyer. She is.

_Is he a man or a fucking puppy-dog?_

Pathetic, that is what he is. He sees her lean over every now and then, quick throws with the arms as she dives down to catch something. He imagines something slimy and smelly and can't help to stare at her bizarrely sloppy elegance. He relaxes a bit, satisfied that she has not yet spotted him. He works his way down the bottle, feeling comfortably numbed by the drink and lulled by the rhythmic splashing of the waves. He almost falls asleep.

_Then she is there. _Standing wide-legged and angry like a gawky scarecrow in her insane get-up. She is rosy cheeked and looks ludicrously healthy, like a 50's ad for cookies and milk, or a Russian farm girl. Her freckles deeply etched into the skin by the harsh unyielding sun. He finds himself craning his neck slightly, leaning forward from the tree trunk. He suddenly has to know what she has spent the better part of the afternoon trying to catch. She swings the bucket behind her, gripping it with of both her hands like a little kid trying to hide something from her mother.

"Why are you here?"

She frowns at him and he can tell she is biting the flesh on the inside of her cheek. Nervous but ready to fight.

No longer submissive. He has awakened something in her with the cruelty of yesterday. Some spirit, something wild, a bit of life. Her eyes shines with a caustic sharp light that he recognizes well. He realizes that he has missed it. _Missed this._

He doesn't deign her with an answer, just throws her his trademark glare under his dirty blond hair, stiff from the salty breeze from the sea. She blows out air through her nostrils, sharply, like a horse. _Frustrated._

He waits. She will do something. He knows she will do something, try to catch him off guard. Try to get him. It is almost a disappointment when instead she pushes her chin up, giving him a her very own special fuck-you glare and proceeds to walk over a few meters away. She positions her bucket and her fishing tools carefully in the sand and sets off towards the tree line. It takes a while, and in the meantime the sun is almost kissing the horizon.

* * *

"Still here?"

She startles him as she stumbles out from the nearby trees, arms filled with dry branches, and grassy stuff. Firewood. _Don't answer._ _Don't owe her anything_.

"You know for someone who can't stand me, you follow me around an awful lot!"

_Don't answer that._

He wishes he did know the answer to that. He doesn't know what the heck he is doing here. He hates her. He can't even look at her face. Save the man who ended his childhood, he has never been as angry at anyone as he is with her. It is an inflamed sore of anger, festering and bubbling right there, at the surface and it has become his constant companion. Perhaps, he needs someone to hate. He always has had someone to blame for his miseries.

And now it is she. This hopeless fuck-up of a human being.

She has killed someone. Knowing her now, he suspects she is a different breed than he. She hasn't lost any sleep feeling guilty. Somewhere in her damaged, desensitized soul there might be a grain of remorse but he doubts it. He doesn't see it. He doesn't recognize the agonizing burden of guilt that he has carried himself for over the years, having killed the wrong man.

_They would never have worked out. _

They would have been a damned catastrophe, frankly. Of that he is sure. For all his skill in sassing out women, he never could figure her out. He has guessed but he does not really know. For once, he doesn't know what this woman needs. But he is pretty sure it is something he cannot and does not want to provide. There is something unloved and unlovable about her. Something orphaned and hopeless. She is a big hole of need, need, need, that no one can fill. It would never work. They are both filled to the brim with need and, _hell, _it would never work out. _But he wants her. Wants. Her._

_No. _He still hates her, _he does_. He really does.

She leans down on her haunches and commences to arrange the firewood in a neat little pile. That hair-raisingly scabby tweed-thingy is still bunched up around her butt and she looks like a cross between an English matron and a squatter on a safari. Her hair is messy, matted and twisted by the wind into insane looking rastafari tangles. She is dirty. No dream-woman for sure.

_No Juliet. That's for sure._

He realizes that he hasn't moved from this spot for hours. There are still a few drops in his bottle and he knows that he will not be able to leave now. The fire is newly lit and sparkles against an evening-sky of indigo and magenta. He notices that she has already gutted and cleaned whatever it was that she spent all afternoon trying to catch. She is putting them on sharpened branches and sticks them in the fire. The air filled by the smell of grilled fish. She pays him no attention. She sits down cross-legged on the sand, her back towards him as she removes the food from the fire to cool off on its stick.

_She pays him no attention._

He scrutinizes her from behind. The curve of her neck, the outline of her awkward figure against the vermillion and gold of the flames. And he can't do it anymore. He can't wait for her to react anymore. He acknowledges his loss as he pads behind her, sinking in the sand and encircling her from the back. Her small but powerful back, hidden in that tent of a shirt. A man's shirt. Perhaps the Doc's? She smells fish, sea, sweat and something sweet. Cinnamon and cherry blossom. The fine hair on her arms, like apricot fuss, aglow from the light of the fire.

His fingers light on her naked arms, up and down. And then moving towards the small buttons that run down the front of her shirt. Patiently at first, then annoyed and hurried at the irksome little buttons. Open till her waist, he calms, nose against neck, inhaling. Deeply. His head feels like it is about to implode.

_He wantswantswants._

"Don't..." she says but there is doubt in her voice and he is already caught in the undertow. The riptide that always rears him in.

Hands, always the hands that do what they want. They stretch further, they glide over the tender skin of her knees. He feels sand and salt in the friction between his palms and her thighs._ Higher. Warmer._

_There_. Nothing there but naked skin and a craving.

"Ain't fond of undies huh?" He can't stop himself.

"You've got them."

He remembers then. The other evening. Her panties thrown in the sand. Her humiliation. His own heartlessness. He mumbles into her neck, "Your only pair? Well, ain't you the classy one?

She laughs then and his heart makes a frog leap in his chest. _So long ago._ Since he made her laugh. A feeling almost better than sex. He has missed this. He pulls at the horrid tweed thing, uncovering her to him, to the firelight. His eyes on her over her shoulder as he moves with her. _Indulging._ Wetness, balmy honey and nectar against his fingers. _Petals and dew_. Her breathing speeds up. He forces her legs wider apart.

_I want you. Want. You._

"Open up" his voice in a whisper, hoarser than he's intended.

She struggles against him. He can feel her thighs clinching against his wrist. Creamy soft against him. He mollifies her with a soft '_schush'_ like someone hushing a baby. She relaxes then, lets herself be brought out in the undercurrent. Lets him wash over her. Her legs open wide letting the waves roll in. _His heart hurting_. Her head thrown backwards, resting on his shoulder. And she has learned _nothing_ from the other night. _Nothing._

He needs no cajolery or trickery to get to her. But he knows she's no victim. She is a viper, a predator and dangerous precisely because she trusts nobody. Nobody.

"Say you're sorry!" His voice is low and controlled. Continues the long, provocative strokes of his fingers against her. - _Wet, sea and salt._

"I am sorry," she exhales but he feels her tensing up, sobering up immediately.

"No, you're not." He ignores her, continues with the torturous languid pull of tide. _Ebb and flow_. Her back is concave with the strain. A struggle to stay in control, regain power.

"No."

Spoken so softly, he almost misses it.

He lets his vigil down for a microsecond. Just in a blink of an eye. And then, with that swift feline move she's got, her elbow catapults backwards and he has time to think that it will surely hit him squarely in the face. Hard little knuckles with a vicious and heartless precision that stuns and strokes his vanity at the same time. A nauseating crunch as sharp bone meets capillaries. Sticky, ketchupy liquid bubbles out when he breathes. Her silhouette ruby-coloured against the backdrop of the fading campfire as he thinks with satisfaction that he has perforated her shield.

_Finally._

Déjà vu of something long past. He doesn't even register his arm launching out, hooking her around the neck and throwing her down in a single abrupt unbroken movement. He doesn't hit women. Ever. But he sure would like a go at her. Incensed by the pain of his nose. He lowers his face as close to her as he can get without skin touching skin. The heat of her breath hits him.

_In the heart._

Her expression is dense and stoic. He can't read it. He knows she will do something, something to diffuse the situation. He awaits the sure to come combustion almost with anticipation, his mind dimmed by her closeness.

Smooth butter-soft skin. Raspberries in milk.

_He can't believe how low he has sunk. _Sweeps her shirt down, away. The skin. Her. Too close._ It hurts._

He sees his blood drip on her midriff as he lowers himself down, down as he where. He levers open her thighs and is surprised when she gives him passage. No resistance. His mouth on her. _This_ he knows. This is all he knows. The wonderful warm center of her, seeing her give up, surrender and shatter. He looks up at her. Pointed little round breasts rising and hands that hold on to his hair. Her lips parted. The lean muscles of her thighs, rigid. All his doing. She succumbs. She shatters, she does. A quiet, curious release that is nothing like what he remembers.

He raises himself up on his arms. Watches her. Like in his dream. Wanton. Spent. Soft in the afterglow. Her hair spread around her head in a tangled disarray in the sand. A different girl, all her guards momentarily down. _Softness,_ he believes until their eyes lock on each other. Immediately alert as she meets his eyes with a sudden razor-sharp clarity like a cat. It isn't over,_ s_he hasn't surrendered. The only sound, their heavy breathing and the sparkle of two incensed minds trying to figure out their next moves.

_Chicken._

She moves first. But he has anticipated her customary head-butt and rolls her over forcing her face downwards in the sand. She tries to knee him and manages to eel her way out of his grip, sand in her mouth spluttering, hissing and furious. Her fist digs down in the sand, quick as a cobra, she mauls his face with a fistful of sand. Playing foul.

He blinks, livid and crazy and stupefied. Grains of sands in his eyes making him tear up as he struggles to catch on to her wild sinewy wrists, hands stronger than logic, pummelling his face and shoulders. He feels his lip crack. The fusillade of destructiveness from her, pent-up rage contained far too long. He doesn't know if he is really the target or only her punching bag, her release. He sees her desperation and all of a sudden. There it is. _Compassion._

She is so fucked-up. There is nothing he can give her.

So he shushes her. Over and over again. Until the fight ebbs out and she just hangs there hovering over him, straddling him in a unconsciously sexual position.

He releases her hands, pushes away a strand of her hair, her fucked-up sandy hair. The back of his hand strokes her flushed cheek. She looks insane. He doesn't know where it comes from but he has to smile. It is a smile that escapes him regardless. He is powerless to stop it. A grin so big it is almost painful.

Then she kisses him. Succulent tangerine cleft against his own raw cracked lips. The taste of her.

_Sand. Blood. Love._

And it doesn't hurt. Not much.

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_Feedback appreciated. Review if you liked it._


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